Claude Cowork: What AI Agent Skills Are + How to Customize Them

Every time you re-explain your process to Claude, you're doing work that a skill should be doing.

A skill is a folder with one file: a description of when to use it and your instructions for how. Claude keeps only the description in memory, matches it against what you ask, and loads the rest when the task fits. A vague description never runs, so that one line gets most of our attention.

In this hands-on session, we build one live in Claude Cowork and cover:

• What an AI agent skill is, and where it sits next to Cowork Instructions (general rules go in Instructions, a repeatable process becomes a skill)
• Writing the description that makes a skill fire
• Recording a skill in Cowork by doing the task once on the screen
• What to read before you install a skill someone else built

No coding. If you have ever onboarded a new hire, you already know how to write one. Bring Claude open on one screen, Cowork if you have it, and a task you are tired of explaining.

Our speaker, Jacqueline V. Twillie, MBA, was featured in Forbes in September 2026 as one of the peer leaders closing the $5.5 trillion AI skills gap. She leads BNEDai, where she teaches non-technical professionals to build AI agents in under an hour, with workshop attendees from AWS, ExxonMobil and Moody's Analytics. She is the bestselling author of three books and hosts the Winning Season podcast, with 200+ episodes.